Academic Writing Guide

• Choose a topic that interests you and will hold your attention. If you do, the research will be more enjoyable! 
• Choose a topic which has ample research available. When considering a topic, do a little preliminary searching to see if enough research exists for your to complete your assignment.
• Choose a topic that is not too broad. You want to be able to cover your topic within the assignment parameters. If you are writing a 5 page paper, you will want to make sure your topic is narrow enough to cover in those 5 pages. 

After you have selected your topic and completed your background research, you must formulate a research question and/or thesis statement.

A research question is the topic you are trying to answer; a thesis statement provides the answer to that question.